DETROIT – Bill Cowher is assuredly part of the foundation on which the sturdy Pittsburgh franchise sits, but he insists finally achieving the ultimate goal does not enhance his self-esteem. It enhances his coaching legacy, though. Cowher added the last meaningful and missing line on his resume when his Steelers Sunday night outlasted the Seahawks 21-10 in Super Bowl XL inside Ford Field. After 14 years at the helm, after four home-field losses in the AFC Championship Game, after being branded as the best coach to never win the big one, Cowher struck a blow for patience and staying the course.

“A lot of people ask me, are you defined by one win, winning the Super Bowl?” a tired but proud Cowher said yesterday morning. “In my mind this does not define who you are. I don’t think the destination defines you, I think it’s the journey that defines you. It’s what you’re able to do over the course of time. You don’t win the game, are you now labeled a loser? I just don’t believe that.”

If the favored Steelers – playing in front of what was a staggering majority of their own Terrible Towel waving fans, essentially making this a home game – did not beat the Seahawks, Cowher would have taken a beating. He admitted “Those AFC championship losses are tough, they wear on you. You go through it a couple of times it makes [winning] that much more meaningful, because we’ve been so close. The further you go, the harder the fall.”

There was no fall, thanks to a defense that limited the highest-scoring team in the NFL to only 10 points and an offense that came up with three huge plays to overcome a shaky outing by Ben Roethlisberger, who despite a record-low rating of 22.6 became the youngest quarterback (one month shy of 24) to win a Super Bowl.

Last year’s Steelers went 15-1 and were far more dominant but were denied by the Patriots in the AFC title game, the third time in Cowher’s tenure he’d been knocked off by the eventual champion. Getting that far again did not appear to be possible when the Steelers lost three straight games to drop to 7-5, knowing that the next loss would likely doom their playoff chances.

The Steelers won their final four regular-season games and, as a No. 6 seed, took their show on the road and won in Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Denver, an unprecedented run to glory. “I wish we would have played the next week, we were in one of those zones, just tell us where we’re going next,” said Cowher, who as the designated home team in the Super Bowl opted for white uniforms to keep the road feel. “I really think these guys thrived on that. With all due respect to Hines Field I was glad we just kept on going off.”

No coach has won a Super Bowl this late in his career. As the final seconds ticked away, Cowher thrust his arms into the air, a release of joy and relief, and made good on his dream of handing team owner Dan Rooney the Vince Lombardi Trophy. Cowher became just the second coach to win a Super Bowl with the team from the city of his birth (George Seifert, a San Francisco native, is the other) and if anyone knows what this means to the Steel City, it’s Cowher.

“What the Pittsburgh team did in the ’70s, they put the city of Pittsburgh on the map,” Cowher said. “What they did was a phenomenal run. Chuck Noll, to win four Super Bowls, I couldn’t even imagine doing that. They created the tradition and the legacy of Pittsburgh, we’re proud of that. But you know what, we kind of did it too in 2005, we kind of did it our way. We’re proud this team is able to be a little part of that great tradition.”